


love letters to and from shrine daughter

by mydearconfidant



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bullying, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29960961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydearconfidant/pseuds/mydearconfidant
Summary: Michimiya Yui writes a love letter everyday to the universe. The universe always writes one back.(piece focused on bi!yui from birth-end of high school)Part of the March 2021 WLW Bang.CW for bullying towards the beginning during Yui's elementary school days, nothing super graphic though
Relationships: Aihara Mao/Michimiya Yui
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Haikyuu WLW Bang





	love letters to and from shrine daughter

Her birth was a miracle. After multiple miscarriages, her parents had almost given up hope that this one would survive. But against all odds, she made it. 

When she’s born, her parents name her “Yui” because they believe that she will be beautiful; she will be a thinker that ties up her hair. They see great things in store for her- high flying, airy laughter, light-hearted dance steps. When she falls, she will rise up again. Each time, they think, she will be stronger, fiercer, truer. Their lovely little fighter. They hope, they wish, they pray. 

Her mother holds her fondly. 

“Go and go far, Yui,” She whispers. 

“Yui”-two simple yet lovely syllables. Yui grows her hair out first- like a battle flag, like a running brook, like a silky weave. 

She’s beauty running wild, free as an untamed horse- maybe a unicorn! Or an alicorn! Those pegasi with wings sure are something, aren’t they? (Yui’s going through a delightful horse girl phase. Indulge her, she’s having good fun if the well-worn copy of Black Beauty has anything to say about it.)

She makes her home on the blacktops and in between forest tree trunks.  
She trips, tears up, but dusts herself off and keeps going.

Yui stands on a fallen oak, and looks at the canopy above.

Little forest overlord that she is, she firmly sticks a special branch by her favorite tree that local Miyagi kids leave messages in. 

Neighborhood lore says that these kinds of messages have a specific kind of luck. Good or bad? Nah, you can’t call it either. 

It’s not the kind of luck that’s given. It’s the kind of luck that you make. 

There’s unspoken rules about what’re acceptable offerings. Don’t leave anything too precious, don’t tell people what you wish for, and don’t look behind you when giving your offerings.  
The gods don’t look kindly on cowards.

It’s a rite of passage for area kids to come here when they turn six. You gotta leave something in the tree, something uniquely *you*- it’s like saying “I’m here! This is me!” to the small world of tree language. 

“Leaf code!” beam the youngest initiates.

“Tree talk.” offer the preteens.

“A waste of time.” mutter the jaded teenagers. How else do you keep insecurities at bay besides being arbitrarily rude about any scrap of salvageable joy? 

“Oh, you’d know if you’re in the know.” wink the adults that’ve long outgrown their angsty “too-cool” for this demeanor. They’ll let the kids have this one- young beasts need their space, growing magic needs their secrets.

Some people call it “Do it Yourself” offerings to Lady Luck. Fortune favors the brave: ask for bravery, then prove it. Coax it out of hiding, and make it your sword and shield. 

Yui asks for it. How’s she going to earn it?

So what does Yui think about tree talk? 

“Fun! Great! This forest is mine! Mine forever!” declares the beaming hero.

Forest love is a fun kind of love.

But it tangles. It catches on branches, on the tugging fingers of playground bullies, on the arbitrary expectations of people that will never know any better. 

Entitled boys spoiled rotten on their own opinion play miniature tyrant.  
Their love language was muddled with hate, and people have taught them that teasing, pulling, pushing is actually “I love you.”

(no, it isn’t.)

And it’s not just the boys. The girls that build opinions from their parents’ big stacks of money, rather than anything substantial. Materialism, misogyny, and one Michimiya Yui that bears the brunt of it all. 

It’s the expectations of playground dictators that are just a bit taller than you, just a bit stronger, and a whole lot meaner. 

The adage of “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” is a tired truth- it’s played out again and again on repeat as spoiled brats try to 

She takes these growing pains home.

Yui’s world turns into a sour, bitter red. Like the kind they put in cough syrup. Like sudden nosebleeds, like dried rust off creaky buildings on their last legs. Red isn’t just for lovers- it moonlights as a tyrant color- an angry color, a tired color, a fighting color. And the schoolyard is full of ugly, lonely red. 

It’s true children are neither sinners nor saints. But some children just have more devil in them than the rest. Michimiya Yui’s no angel, but she deserves better. 

Regardless of what people think of her staccato-beated nerves, she’s no pushover. 

She gets her hair cut. This is defiance. Yui owns herself- in her timid entirety, with all the lionhearted, rabbit-hearted fighting spirit of an elementary schooler with something to prove. This is her first battle line. It will not be the last. When the devil children come after her, she’ll beat them into the dirt. 

Stern-eyed teachers will send her to time out, but oh, that’s just another way of the world saying “well fought, wronged hero.” 

Yui carries all indignation of her “I didn’t do it” and “They really did start it!” in her clenched fists alongside the “They had it coming to them.” 

Well fought indeed, little rabbit. 

Fighting back- another stepping stone towards Yui loving Yui. 

Go, adventurer. The road will be long, the road will be foggy, your legs will bruise, your feet will bleed from thorns and caltrops, your arms will be lacerated by brambles, love will strike like lightning, but oh- we said it would be worth it, not easy.

Yui’s on the blacktop by herself again. 

She looks up at the sky, asking whatever deity’s in charge of girls that would rather play in forests than sit alone at lunch. “When do things get better?”

The indifferent skies don’t answer.

“I don’t know, when will you get better?” is the implication of its silence. To her, at least.

Yui kicks a rock.

“That doesn’t mean anything and you know it.”

Hatchlings must break their way out of the shell to be truly born.

The bravest among us take back their fears from lions’ jaws. From defeat, the flower blooms.

Fly on, bird of prey. 

But there’s more to elementary school than little hellfires and schoolyard skirmishes. Some devil children never learn, but some follow Dante out of the inferno and into the light.

They hang up their horns and pointed tails to draft their peace treaties. 

They trade their claws and scales for dove wings and olive branches. They ask if she wants to join their flock. Yui’s not the resentful type, and accepts their white flags graciously. 

There’s a girl who’s always been too shy to approach Yui. She was no devil, but she regrets saying nothing when Yui was being bullied. The girl comes in with a white flag of her own.

She asks ,“Do you want to be friends?” 

That’s how Yui met Mao Aihara. People have not been kind to Mao either, and she has been treated like an overlooked sparrow. Washed out brown and grey. Common. Plain. 

But the celestial deities love all their creations, even the most seemingly insignificant. And Mao is neither drab nor common.

Mao-chan likes trading Pokemon cards, pretending to be Sailor Mars, and scraped her knee once trying to punch like Haruno Sakura. Mao is like shiny sunbursts that reflect off of cardinal wings. 

Mao is a sweet red and vivid pink- like jam made from freshly hand picked strawberries, like cherry pie. 

She’s like roadside peach flowers half-open with silent promises of “in time, I will bear fruit, like fellowship meant to be shared by kindred spirits.”

Mao laughs and laughs like she’s unbeatable- like she could run into any storm and effortlessly shake off wind and water. Yui wants to know the secret of Mao's bravery and loveliness.

They are mischievous snowballs thrown at each other’s backs in January, like chirping hatchlings excited to greet the sky and little firecrackers dreaming about showing their colors in large festivals. 

They are silly wrapped in genius, a kind of messy, joyous two person garden. The greatest joy of elementary school, Mao thinks, is how her heart grows into Yui so naturally. 

Mao doesn’t know that this is love. Let her figure this out little by little.

They aren’t omnivorous yet, (they don’t even like their vegetables) but they dye their friendship with candy colors, 3 hour long pillow fights, and whispered midnight anxieties about what they’re going to be like when they grow up. 

Mao introduces Yui to her two mothers when they hang out for the first time. Both of them teach at a local university- English Professor Aihara Hanako’s all zesty sarcasm and good humor, contrasting against Anthropology Professor Aihara Makoto’s serene, deadpan demeanor. Their house is full of book stacks scattered by absent minded Hanako, various tea cups, antique clocks, and countless amounts of Mao’s own messy scribbles framed on the wall. 

This house is an old, cherished thing- washed in memories- warm and fond, bitter and regretful, flavors of every mood. 

In time, this becomes Yui’s second home. 

It listens to the way 

Mao gets Yui to watch Sailor Moon with her. They think Tuxedo Mask’s stupid and that Usagi should get a girlfriend or become an awesome, radiant Moon Queen in her own right. They think Sailor Neptune and Sailor Jupiter are the absolute coolest and beg their parents for handmade matching costumes. 

Their parents oblige, but they teach Mao and Yui every step of the way in case they want more than Neptune and Jupiter. Their little birds are greedy and eager enough to want to dress up as the whole galaxy. 

And why shouldn’t they? 

Girls in love with daydreams are invincible. Girls that trade their starry eyes with each other are beyond invincible- indestructible, almighty, unstoppable. 

It’s a good kind of greedy, to want more of something better. The kind of better you haven’t pieced together yet. 

Yui, Mao thinks, has the sort of mysterious shine of someone who’s figuring themselves out but is already a raw sort of incredible. 

Yui, Mao thinks, is the sort of magic spell you hold close in your heart because it’s impossible to translate into human words.

Yui. Yui. Yui. 

Mao thinks Yui...She thinks…..She doesn’t know what to think. (oh little lovebird, you’ll get there eventually.)

Alongside Sailor Moon, Mao shares volleyball with Yui. Hanako used to be a middle blocker back in high school, and plays a bit with a local neighborhood association. “Block”, “Set”, “Receive”, “Spike”....these motions that they drill patiently into muscle memory become natural, and a special kind of comfort. 

Hanako’s cheerful grin and patient demeanor makes every little success that much sweeter for these fledglings. 

Mao and Yui write a love letter to volleyball together, guided by Hanako’s gentle hand. This mutual love of theirs leads them to their elementary school’s volleyball club, and that’s where they meet Sawamura Daichi. 

In time, he’ll be the topic of one of Yui’s love letters. But today, he’s another nice kid that’s just excited to be here. Ikejiri Hayato joins their circle shortly after, and the four of them practice during lunch, make dragons and castles out of clouds and jump in autumn leaves.

It’s good, it’s great, it’s like perpetual summertime and skipping rocks across the lake all year round. 

Conversations drift by on lazy afternoons walking back home. 

“So what’re your favorite Kanto starters?”

“Charmander all the way!

“Wouldn’t it be cool if Haruno Sakura could go super Saiyan? Omg, I’d draw that!”

“Gimme your copy of Shonen Jump! I wanna see what happens next!” 

Our four heroes swear friendship as eternal as the stars above. They cross metaphorical swords quasi-Musketeer style, make pinky promises, and carve names into tree bark. 

Birds of a feather make one flock, and Yui finds three other people to give the forest a bit of themselves. 

They write a group message. 

“Move over, your elbow’s in my stomach!”

“I wanted red! No fair!”  
It’s not so much a letter as a patchwork of jumbled thoughts vaguely orchestrated into coherence. Four different sets of hands come together to make a nonsensical, passionate chaos of good intentions and well wishes. 

It’s messy. It’s perfect. It’s them. 

They come in together with a group message scribbled with their favorite characters and bits of anime catchphrases overlapping one another. A good few “believe its!” are sprinkled in.

Kids come and go, morphing into pseudo adults composed of awkward insincerities and earnest feelings. The riotous symphony of adolescence, the rot of friendships gone to seed and the stumbling first loves akin to Bambi running and tripping on his spindly legs. 

It’s the trying and the failing that shakes the best or worst out of them all. The vague border between child and adult is a challenger’s road: the difficult love that has to be coaxed from cruelty or lie dormant forevermore. 

Michimiya’s world mixes into black, white, and grey. Young children only think of black and white as good and bad, but as they turn into young adults, they get unsure. What do they make of grey? 

What do they make of getting betrayed by sunlight, crying out their tangled worries by night sky, and putting one and one together to find out that adults really can’t walk you through all the unknowable fears of the past, present, and future?

The universe is testing her. 

In time, the starry dreams in her eyes she chases while half-asleep will take the shape of girls. Sometimes it’s boys, sometimes it’s girls. She runs until she catches up- or rather, when they catch up to her. Dreams hold her tightly, reverently, eternally.

She comes and goes- here, she’s going, she’s leaving, in an instant, in a moment, in a lifetime, in an eternity- actually, time and place don’t matter. Whatever Yui becomes, it will be amazing. 

Violets thread the forest vines tonight. The red dawn and the blue forest make pressed lavender. 

Girls: She leans forward, brushing past the bridal veil of lilies. She leans forward, into the morning sunrise of another girl’s embrace. She leans forward as if to greet the 3 am starlight outside her window.

Boys: She leans forward, brushing past the bridal veil of white roses. It’s compromise and making the best out of people. She thinks that way about Daichi, when she realizes that she draws his name in shoujo manga frilly hearts one too many times.

People, in all their shapes and sizes have come, gone, and have left for better and worse. But as anxious as Yui is, she believes for the better. If she gets down, she slaps her cheeks and tells herself otherwise. 

We call this “daily dedication”, “an ardent heart”, “a steadfast soul”. We call this “a steady hand to hold”, “a harbor in a storm”, “coming home”. 

When you assign someone as a direction in your life, say, just left of Polaris or just north of Alcor, perhaps just south of Mizar, you’ve held onto them. You’ve written them into your story, and can only hope that they’ve written you into theirs. 

Maybe they’ve crash landed on you, maybe they’ve drifted in like a lazy river, maybe you’ve run away and back to them only to find out they’re here to stay.

Love letters are things that you write to yourself and optionally someone else. “I want to see you”, “Do you feel the same?”, “We part ways here, but keep me in your heart”.

Stationery isn’t necessary. It’s how you act, how you think, what kind of person you become to someone else and how you grow beyond your pettiness and fears. Owning up to what you are. Knowing “There are some things about myself beyond repair. But I piece back every shattered shard of my soul until the same person rises up again to try being different and better.” 

You write it with your broken bones, tired eyes, bittersweet partings and swelling heartstrings. 

The word for unconditional love in Japanese has “heart” in it. It sounds like the English word “I”. You give yourself in your entirety to the people, places, and things that make your whole world. It’s unconditional because you know you’ll get something equal or greater than what you give. 

Isn’t that great? Isn’t that terrifying? 

Unconsciously or consciously, love is always on Yui’s mind. 

Light-hearted love like jamming to mxmtoon with your best friend. 

Spinning “cliche” on guitar strings until you get sick of how it sticks in your brain like gum on well-worn sneakers, while dust motes swirl near a sunlit window on a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

The heavier commitments are like a leaf caught in a river’s torrent, rended to pieces by the gushing rapids. 

Like a message to be delivered through frost or fire, a package bound together with something desperate, like fate.

Take it or leave it. For Yui, she always takes it. 

She takes it like a challenge, she takes like when she places her hand in her mother’s firm grip on her yearly visits to the local shrine, she takes it like it’s a bitter pill, like it’s fizzy soda, like it’s the bleeding crimson of heroes dead, gone, and never forgotten.

She takes it all. 

Michimiya Yui and middle school volleyball. It’s the undefined experimentation of it all- no one plays set positions yet, no one knows what kind of person they are yet, no one knows what kind of love is written in their bones.

It’s trying. Mao Aihara is a trier. She tries at volleyball, she tries her best to make the top ten highest scores, she tries to be a good daughter, and she tries to understand what she thinks about Yui.

It’s still not her time yet. Middle school is about not knowing. Middle school is about the answers without questions, the questions without answers- like the mismatched socks tossed in your drawer to be sorted on a rainy day that may or may not come.

Oh, but it will rain. 

And you will know. 

What Yui doesn’t know, she’ll find out later.

She’ll find out when she flies. 

When she’s a first year at Karasuno High School Girls’ Volleyball Club, she dashes over to the girl’s volleyball team and scribbles an application in seconds. Yui wants to fight with the best of them, and can’t wait. 

She makes it past tryouts. Naturally, Mao’s part of her murder of crows. There’s one other first year fledgling- Chizuru Sasaki. Volleyball is a completely new world to her, and she steps into the court

Their captain, Yamato Tomoe, is an Amazon warrior of a girl- a 6 foot 2 inch battle goddess of a wing spiker. She wants, demands, orders her birds of prey to fly higher, stronger, faster. 

Her parents didn’t name her after the legendary lady of war Tomoe Gozen for nothing- Yui’s certain that her captain could break horses and crush waves of enemies with her glare alone.

If you’re not careful, she’ll peck your eyes out. 

But it takes more than a captain to win. 

One woman armies can’t win the war, because a lone soldier can’t defend an entire castle. The rest of the Karasuno girls aren’t feeble, but they simply couldn’t match up against larger predators. 

They caw, tear flesh, and beat their wings in vain. 

Oh, the powerhouse schools that they couldn’t compete with.

Aoba Johsai’s Girls’ Team eats opponents like venus fly traps and penetrate defenses like invasive kudzu. They see, they come, they conquer. 

Nekoma’s queen cats guard their court fiercer than Bast, shredding crow feathers with bared fangs and unsheathed claws. Lionesses, every one of them. 

Inarizaki’s trickster vixens toy with their opponents with guerrilla tactics as bewitching as fox fire. They bat their prey before delivering their killing blows. 

Shiratorizawa’s eagles, Kamomedai’s seagulls, Itachiyama’s mountain goddesses...  
And above them all, Niiyama, the indomitable empresses that they are, reign forever on thrones higher than the stratosphere. 

Karasuno’s girls aim for the top time and time again, but get their wings burnt, frozen, and torn off. 

It’s not just losing itself. It’s the dreadful afters that make weeping willows out of people and break your pride like waves crashing on rocks. The silent post-game bus ride home after everyone packs up their grief and surrenders themselves onto the bus. 

Yui’s love letter for volleyball is the most arduous, lengthy love letter she’s ever written.

She’s thought about tearing it up, she’s thought about erasing every line of progress she’s logged in (the ugly kind of erasing where you take a pencil and jerk it across the page so hard it tears)

But volleyball’s not a love letter written by a single person- it requires at least 5 others.  
Yui puts in her bravery, her hopes, her fears, her frustrations, her *everything* into this love letter built on years of diligence and passion. Every blocked spike, every failed receive, every lost point…. If you dare to love volleyball, prove that you can write a victory.

If victory is something you write together, what do you write it with? 

The moment Yui breaks under her own expectations is the moment where she has to remake herself from the ground up. Grounding, shaking off the dust, and preparing for flight once again. 

Yui slaps her cheeks.

Daichi’s piece of advice to her in middle school sticks with her like a handprint on her heart. 

“What’s the one thing every player learns? The rally isn’t over until the ball drops!” 

And oh, Yui’s been fighting. It’s undeniable that she’s earned her regular’s position, but she has more to prove. She’s been fighting against herself and against the world. She competes with herself: She backslides- a misstep to the left, a failed receive to the right. Between her old records and the standards she wants to meet, it’s a perpetual uphill climb.

Steps to write a love letter to volleyball: come to practice early, eat healthily, review each match and take stock of every success and missed opportunity. 

Stamp it with a “Don’t mind!” after every possible mistake. 

Yui refuses to write a tragic romance. 

And Mao notices. Mao’s eyes are always on Yui’s efforts. It’s the way Yui never stops fighting. The way that she drives herself relentlessly ever forward pushes her to match Yui in pace- ever faster, ever closer. 

Yui’s refining her own kind of beauty. It’s carved from rock, hewn with fingers bloodied raw.  
It’s strong, but unstable. 

So what has Mao been refining? What shape does Mao's passion take? Yui thinks Mao can run through storms, but eddies of doubt bleed through. Forget white, grey, black and sour red, Mao’s most terrified of pink--Yui’s relentless unconditional, honest affection. 

Mao is a planner. She likes color-coding her notes, she likes being on time, and above all, she doesn’t throw caution to the winds.

Mao is practical, but is she prepared to harbor a passionate, honest love? Whether it’s for Yui or volleyball, she has to wait. 

The answer came to her partway through her first year. 

If someone were to pull aside Mao and ask her what she likes the most about volleyball, she’d answer,

“Ground control. Being a setter.”

“It just feels right when things click in place.”  
Mao is a planner. She likes color-coding her notes, she likes being on time, she likes knowing her spikers. 

The volleyball set is a piece in a three step puzzle. 

1,2,3 and then execution. 

There’s something to be said about “getting there” that’s satisfying. Being certain. A steady heartbeat. Reliable support. A dead-on set. 

It’s not about flying for Mao. She plays the strategist’s role in directing the flow of battle.

To shape the path of flight, she makes each palaboras count.  
Write these paths to her spikers. Stamp it with a spike.  
She sends each letter to Mao, trusting it to fly straight and true.

Mao Aihara and Michimiya Yui try, but their unreliable teammates are those who are afraid to fly before they’ve even tested their wings.

“What is this?” Maoasks, to no one in particular. When she’s alone, it’s just herself, her thoughts, and the answers that aren’t coming. 

Answers to questions about how to fix something broken and beyond the power of a single person to fix . About how to send a love letter that you’ve been writing for years. If that love letter happens to be for your best friend, what then? 

Through heartbreak and burnout, they brave the coming matches. Volleyball is a difficult love letter, but there’s something in Yui and Mao that whispers, “It’s worth it to keep writing.”

Volleyball’s love language requires six people. But it’s up to each individual to give themselves into this love letter. The adrenaline and the demands are  
It’s not as low stakes as a forest gently standing sentinel over young beasts that have all the time in the world to run free and wild. 

When the typical face-slap and pep talk fail to do the trick, they patch it up with Sailor Moon.

Here’s to moon pride for getting Yui through the roughest days. She knows the lines by heart, so the familiarity of it makes a good backdrop for mindless conversation. 

But can you say “I love you” with Sailor Moon alone? 

Mao thinks “I love you” is a bit like living out Sailor Moon with your best friend. Unlike Sailor Moon, there’s no script for what comes next. 

Mao has been with Yui through snowball fights, through budding spring, through autumn leaves, through summer blaze, and is afraid. 

When you have to stare down a blank page that says “the rest of it is up to you”, writer’s block strikes you with a rush of fidgety cowardice. 

“And what if I don’t know?” asks Mao, sitting at her desk at home. 

“And what if I don’t know what to say to someone who doesn’t know how to give up something good?”

This lovebird won’t sing yet. This love letter isn’t finished. 

Days fall away to weeks, weeks bleed into months. 

Tomoe knows who’s still writing love letters to volleyball when first years weed themselves out. 

They leave, but Mao, Yui, and Chizuru stay. She notices how they hold their heads up after defeat, how they shake off grit and disappointment to stagger back to the court. 

Yui never outgrew play pretend, even when victory is nowhere in sight. She pretends like they’ve already won the next game, and continues on. 

Mao doesn’t play pretend, but shoulders the burden head on. She’s practical about this. 

Loss after loss, their general of a captain continues to evaluate their battle tactics, her murder licking their wounds in their gym, trying to tape up their wings and bolster each other’s courage every time.

When Yui stumbles on their Tomoe Gozen crying her eyes out alone in the club room, Yui knows that Tomoe is paying the price of love.

It’s written in Tomoe’s tears: the care that went into daily practice, monitoring her underclassman’s progress, negotiating with the basketball team for extra time....All seemingly for nothing.

Tears are a unique breed of love letter. They spell out the tumultuous courtship between crows and the victory that slips through their grasp.  
Until the flower blooms, these tears water the soil of their progress until these birds are ready to labor again.

Tomoe, for all her fighting prowess, is but a girl on the cusp of adulthood. Almost a woman, but not today. She dumps her bruised ego and regrets onto both of her hands. 

A girl with expectations: for herself, for others, for what she could do with her fighters.

She has to hang up her sword for good now.

Yui looks at this fallen warrior.

She swears by sorrow and starlight for future victories.

The third years near graduation, and Tomoe approaches Yui. Their seemingly aloof captain has noticed Yui’s determination, and arms Yui with her approval. 

“There’s no junior that’s worked harder for this, take care of Karasuno for me.”

So Yui becomes vice captain. 

Yui takes up the mantle with pride, and becomes a second year. She scouts for recruits with the new captain, and welcomes Moe Kikuchi, Rinko Sudou, Aoki Manami, and Nozomi Watabe into the fold. 

Moe Kikuchi: observant, indecisive, afraid of airplanes, but ever bright eyed in the spiker run. 

Manami Aoki: far off dreamy eyes, a doodler, a fondness for K-pop girl groups, and future setter.

Nozomi Watabe: brash brunette wildfire with a heart of gold, a sweet spot for Yakult drinks, and a steady receive. 

Before she meets her juniors, she paces around in the bathroom.  
She’s an agitated little rabbit with nowhere to run. The clock ticks down and the walls seem to twist, writhing as her breathing constricts.  
“You’re a senpai now, Yui, what are you going to do about that?”

She can only do her best, that’s all she’s ever done and all she’ll ever do. 

Year Two of writing her high school volleyball love letter starts off with Yui fumbling and stuttering as the spotlight pins her juniors’ attention to her.

Yui’s words spill out like tangled yarn. 

But Mao smooths them into an organized pattern. 

Patient but flustered, Yui relies on Mao for support when she forgets how to demonstrate some fundamentals. She plays off Chizuru’s able guidance to provide a tailwind to their first-years. 

Building new strength, they reevaluate the past year’s loss and soldier on. 

The steep battle for underdogs becomes even tougher, as they fight against their low morale and the right to remain on the court.

These half-hearted efforts don’t carry them far enough. These juniors are too scared of the possibility of failure and don’t dedicate themselves enough to practice.

Eliminated at the edge of victory, the ticket to Nationals was taken after a bitter rally. The poison ivy Seijoh girls represent Miyagi while the crows head home once again. 

They don’t get as far with the she-cats with their birdcages, the fighting kamaitachi with their wayward cyclones, and the mountain goddesses with their avalanches. 

Another year, another loss. 

“Yui, do you love in vain?” The universe keeps testing her.

“No. Never.” She etches this answer into every time she gets up. Another page. One more point. 

Every time she dares to love volleyball. 

Michimiya Yui becomes a third year, and the title of captain rests heavy on her shoulders.

She’s no heroine, she’s no superwoman, and she has neither the ferocity or charisma of a heroine that can break wild horses to her will. 

Unrefined. Raw. These words continue to describe her. Unproven and still ever hungry for glory, even timid rabbits go down fighting. 

She’s no Yamato Tomoe. But she’s the only captain that the Karasuno Girls have. 

This crow has never known feats of grandeur. Her flock has never tasted victory, only unfulfilled promises and unenthusiastic, fruitless attempts at clinging to the court.

Call it desperation, call it stubbornness. 

It takes more than love to stick with something that doesn’t love you back. Effort means that the

Dismissal and gossip swirl around her team.

“Grounded crows”, “flightless birds,”, a “former powerhouse”.

Yui shakes it off. Today, tomorrow, and after that she pushes through. If their wings are clipped, she’ll crawl. 

Here’s to the defiance of a heathen whose prayers go unanswered in the night and take matters into their own hands. 

Just a handful of first years join this year, dissuaded by Karasuno’s lackluster reputation. Even then, Yui doesn’t take that as a sign of defeat. 

Yui’s spine is not forged iron, nor diamond, nor any unbreakable substance. There is only a girl with dedication fraying at the edges, writing her heart out on tattered stationery. 

Actually, it would be wrong to say there’s only one girl. There’s another one who’s been faithfully sticking by her side since they’ve been learning their fundamentals, the one that brought her to the world of Pretty Guardians. 

There is nothing there but a rabbit heart strung together out of sheer desperation and a  
a veteran unprepared for the battlefields to come.

Her seemingly fragile paper is held together on the delicate hope of “this time, things will be better”. She keeps training, even when people show more excuses than progress. 

A half-sincere apology about an important math test here, someone needing to skip out for a concert there, and a battle formation already in tatters crumbles.

Wringing out one last hurrah out of her heartstrings, blood, sweat and tears, Yui clings, scrambles, scrapes out a desperate plea to keep going *just* for a few seconds longer.

Yui’s not a lot of things, but Yui’s not running. 

Everyone’s full of excuses and it’s a farce to say that they are even “a team”.

They didn’t practice enough so they didn’t sync up enough, they didn’t keep it together, they didn’t care enough about volleyball- 

An entire list of didn’ts, couldn’ts, and regrets.

But if there’s one thing a captain can never admit before it’s over, it’s defeat.

Yui can’t wrangle them all into line, but she can put up a brave front before it’s over. 

“Let me be in love with volleyball just a little longer.” Yui pleads. 

Once again, it takes more than a captain to win a game. 

Crows that fly alone aren’t a murder. Stripped of their feathers and mobbed on all sides, they plummet. 

So these wishes scatter like dandelion seeds, ruthlessly taken by the simple fact that they didn't deserve to be there a single moment longer.

This is a game for the truly strong, and the blatant truth of the matter is that they were meant to weeded out long ago.

Once again battered into submission, these scavengers become the scavenged.

The statement “we played volleyball too” doesn’t get enough justice. If there’s something about that “too.” That there was something to be proven about inherently being there. That you were spat out because you fundamentally don’t belong there. It takes more than love to win. So what was worth loving? 

Was it being able to say “I’m proud of my teammates and what they could do” just a little longer?  
Even if they’ve let you down? Even if you know you worked harder and couldn’t pull them together? 

What do you have to be proud of, Yui? 

How much do you have to give to a world that refuses to give back?

The world as Yui knows it is stained with defeat. “Defeat” has been colored by rusted blood and indifferent, murky gray. 

But if there’s tear stains on this love letter, they come from tears of joy as well as sorrow. 

It’s still true that girls in love are invincible. If not in volleyball, then some other way. 

If you ask Yui about what love would look like, she still wouldn’t know. 

She makes her best attempts, and it reads as the following so far-

Love: service, sacrifice. “trying is still worth it if I say so” arming her as fighting words, and light hearted dance steps that your parents gave you as your birthright . To give yourself wholeheartedly to something that demands that you better yourself in order to get it. 

And then there’s Mao. Reliability, consistency and dedication. She’s always there with those faithful, steady parabolas that continuously find their way to their spikers.

Everything comes to an end with this last Inter-High. 

One love letter in tatters, one love letter that needs to be delivered.

The universe urges Mao before she graduates ,“Tell her you love her before you have to leave.” 

Mao holds out her love letter and unfurls her thoughts softly.

She stares dead-on at Yui. The wind rustles a bit, gently blowing cherry blossoms around and carries her voice to the other girl.  
“I bloom for you….do you feel the same?”

And it rains. 

Brilliant, oblivious Yui wakes up at last.


End file.
